(I haven’t posted any of my background stuff on how Bitty gets from Samwell to the Schooners, so here’s my bullet point breakdown of how/when/why)
Part I – Hug Check | Part II – Chirping | Part III – Post-Season
– Senior year, Bitty is the first openly gay NCAA captain of any men’s sport. When Samwell wins the Frozen Four, commentators start speculating on him being a draft prospect. Jack isn’t out yet.
– ‘Get Bittle in the NHL’ goes viral as an equality issue and the NHL is under pressure to recruit him, which creates this divisive ‘is he really good enough to play’/’the league is homophobic’ situation among fans and within the NHL.
– Bitty gets a lot of heat from all sides and Jack is really worried about his bf, who is living every coming-out fear Jack’s ever had. The Falcs can’t recruit Bitty because Jack has already disclosed their relationship to management, so Jack can’t protect Bitty.
– Things go downhill quickly after a hacker leaks a series of emails between the Commissioner and several owners, wherein he says an AHL franchise needs to ‘take one for the team’ and recruit Bittle so the NHL won’t have to deal with the ‘problem’ anymore.
– The league course-corrects hard and is bending over backward to get Bitty to sign off on their official apology, but Bitty is disgusted by the whole process and doesn’t want to participate in the draft just to make the league look better. He isn’t planning to go pro at all, and now he’s hesitant to move to Providence with Jack, concerned that he might accidentally out Jack and land him with the same PR problems.
– Bitty goes back to Georgia the summer after he graduates.
– After things calm down a bit, Bitty gets a call from the new Schooners owner, a progressive tech billionaire who hates the NHL commissioner and genuinely wants to sell Bitty on Seattle. Unsure of himself and his relationship, Bitty agrees to the meeting…
– And surprise! Bitty loves Seattle, the team, the ownership group, the food, everything. Even less of a surprise, the team loves Bitty and offers him a two-year contract with an option for renewal.
– The distance hurts, but it actually makes things easier because the risk of Jack being outed is much less if he’s not sharing an apartment with Bitty.
– Bitty understands now why Jack needs to prove himself before he comes out, the same way Bitty needs to prove himself now. Jack deserves that buffer, and Bitty can help in his own small way.
– At the same time, after seeing how Bitty was treated Jack doesn’t want to come out until his boyfriend is established enough that he won’t be remembered as ‘that gay hockey player’ or ‘Jack Zimmermann’s boyfriend’. They’re just two dumb boys looking out for each other. They agree to revisit coming out together after Bitty’s two-year contract ends.
– Bitty’s rookie year is a hell of an adjustment, he billets with d-man called Carter Morin who is a year younger than Bitty but still has three pro seasons under his belt. Carter is convinced Bitty will be a target because of his size and sexuality, so he becomes obsessed with teaching Bitty how to ‘defend’ himself. This basically boils down to lessons in ‘how to play dirty and not get caught’.
– During these lessons, Bitty realizes he has a lot of anger he’s not dealing with. He’s pissed about being marginalized by the league, the press that won’t stay out of his and Jack’s business, he’s pissed he can’t publicly be with his boyfriend, he’s furious WBC are planning to picket his first home game. He has years of repressed southern rage and he doesn’t have to play nice to make bad people feel good. Not anymore.
– Off the ice Bitty is a perfect gentleman, does tons of outreach, fundraising, he visits hospitals and coaches day-camps, after that first season he’s a fan favorite, but on the ice Bitty slowly becomes a living embodiment of ‘float like a butterfly, sting like a bee’; he’s a good player, everyone knows it, but now he’s absolutely ruthless and spends his fair share of time in the penalty box, initially for defending himself, later for defending others.
– During a particularly aggressive Schooners game, a commentator jokingly describes a post-fight Bitty as Bob’s spiritual successor, coining the term ‘Bad Bittle’. Bob is elated, Jack is horrified.
– Bitty ultimately makes friends on the team, builds a following, and becomes an integral part in building Seattle’s fledgling franchise into a championship team.
– Schooners take the cup in Bitty’s second year and Jack is surprisingly okay with his boyfriend getting a ring before him, it means they’re one step closer to being untouchable
– The Falconers dethrone the Schooners the following season and win the championship. Jack and Bitty come out/marry on Jack’s cup day. They don’t wear wedding bands, they wear their cup rings.
Tag: check please
A Bad Case of the Bittles
I have a head canon that at some point before signing with the Falcs, Jack made an appointment with a cardiologist, to deal with a heart problem he noticed developing the end of his senior year. The doctor kept assuring Jack his heart was fine, but Jack knew all the racing and skipping of beats he felt in his chest was part of a bigger medical issue.
Finally, on their sixth appointment, the doctor gave Jack a diagnosis:
“There’s some type of
arrhythmia, I know it.“
“Jack, we’ve done 5 stress tests, you could run the Boston marathon right now, comfortably."
"But you see, whenever I walk into the Haus kitchen, I feel the fluttering. It’s significant. Also, when Bittle and I went to the beach Saturday, my heart started hammering, the Falcs are going to find some cardiac problem in the physical."
*SIGH*
"It’s the guy, Jack.""Excuse me?"
"Did you never notice that every occurrence involves this Bittle person you won’t stop talking about?"
"I don’t talk about Bittle that much-"
"Jack – I know he switched from unsalted butter to salted butter for his Moomaw’s tarts, because the taste was off. I know he has a cute little crinkle in his nose when he laughs and the fact that his laughter somehow induces chest pain in you. I know that he wore his red shorts four times in the last three weeks – and that you had a cardiac episode every time he bent over in them. It’s the guy, Jack."
"So…you’re saying Bittle is bad for my heart?"
"I need you to leave."
"Is there something I can do? Like a low-Bittle diet? I can’t cut him out completely. Should I ask him to stop wearing the shorts? Maybe if he wore them more I’d get used to them? What about when he dances to Beyonce, are you sure that’s the reason my heart st-"
"Leave, and send me an invitation to your wedding."
"But I’m not getting married?"
"GET OUT!”
@wrathofthestag @disraeligearsgoestumblin @victorineb @wraithsonwingsposts – totally happened, right?
Check, Please!
Junior Year #18 – Family Skate
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Alicia Zimmermann stared in movies in the 90′s
One of these was the story of a teenage girl, figure skater (she had a stunt double), who was on her way to win all the medals when, because insert reason here, she gets sent to live in Nashville with her father, whom she never met before.
She misses skating but discovers that, with her equilibrium, she can do horse acrobatics in a new kind of rink. I think it’s called vaulting.
She also falls in love with a tall, dark haired, aloof young man who tends to the horses and plays soft country music on his guitar.
And when she inevitably has to go back to the North, she gets heartbroken again, but fear not, because he follows her and learns to skate so he can go ask her out after a practice (or AFTER SHE JUST FINISHED HER SHOW AT THE REGIONALS, THIS IS A 90′S TEENAGE GIRL MOVIE IT NEEDS MORE CLICHÉS AND BIGGER DECLARATIONS OF LOVE. CAN WE GET THE HORSE ON THE ICE???)
Anyway this movie is SO TACKY and Alicia can’t stand to watch herself. It’s become kind of a meme on tumblr because half the teenage girls wanted to be Alicia, the other half wanted to date her.
The SMH chat is full of memes from this movie, sometimes Holster can spend entire days communicating with only pics of Jack’s mom. Jack is weirded out, because for him, it’s a traditional Christmas movie he used to watch religiously with is dad.
The DVD of that movie is Shitty’s most prized possession.
magic touch bond au
- i keep thinking of a magical au where jack and bitty wake up
- like after a party or something and they’re both in excruciating pain
- and so all the guys are freaking out and they sort of piece together that jack and bitty are being affected by the same thing
- so holster hauls a screaming bitty into jack’s room and dumps him on the bed next to jack and the moment they touch everything…stops
- why yes, it’s our old friend, the Forced to Be Touching At All Times Trope
NHL!Bitty (Pt. IV) – RPF
@missweber requested NHL!Bitty dealing with Hockey RPF. This got a little longer than expected, with a side pairing of Jack/philly-cheesesteak
The most annoying thing is that for all of the ‘Jack/Parse’, ‘Jack/Tater’, ‘Jack/Sid’, ‘Jack/fucking-every-player-on-the-east-coast’ fic, there are a whopping SIX ‘Jack/Eric’ fics on Ao3. Six.
On one hand, Eric’s proud they’ve hidden their realtionship so well, on the other, Eric is insulted. But really, with their disappointing portmanteau of ‘Jeric’ or ‘Zittle’, it’s not surprising they’re horribly under-appreciated.
“I just wish my fans were more creative.”
Over Skype, Eric watches Jack plow through a Philly cheesesteak with no small measure of jealousy. He’s lonely, and hungry, and his asshole boyfriend is doing this on purpose.
“You know,” Jack says, talking out of the side of his half-full mouth, “if you let the Schoons call you ‘Bitty’ our name could have been ‘Zimbits’. That’s kinda on you.”
“You’re going to sit there with that fucking sandwich and say my name is the reason people don’t think we’d be a good couple?”
Jack holds up a finger to the camera while taking another bite with an exaggerated moan, Eric flips him off.
“Hey, it is not my fault you’re three hours behind and our cheat days don’t line up.”
“People ship me with Parse, of all people. Four of the fics are just three-ways with Kent.”
Jack hums in agreement and bites at a bit of steak trying to escape the bun. Eric needs to have a word with that boy about speaking with his mouth full.
“I’m telling your mother you’re gross,” Eric warns, picking up his laptop to walk to the kitchen, suddenly ravenous.
“She knows,” Jack chides, brushing off the threat. “But did you read the fic where we’re at the Olympics? At least you were included in the orgy scene, that’s something.”
“Tater is a very generous lover,” Eric snorts with laughter and scrubs a hand over his face. He had read that fic, and blushed all through the part where Tater and Jack’s passionate affair caused an international incident, Eric himself having been relegated to a background pairing halfway through.
“Isn’t he just? It’s weird people don’t pick up on the tension when we play, because I feel like it’s really obvious how much I want to fuck you.”
“Romantic, Zimmermann.”
“I’m too tired for romance, Bits. I miss you.”
“You’re also too full of cow. You done yet?” Eric makes a circle gesture around his mouth. “I’m real tired of this meat grinder situation you’ve got going on.”
“Well normally I’d have a different kind of meat to occupy my time, but since you’re in Washington, and I’m in Philadelphia…” Jack grins sloppily and holds up what appears to be the other half of his sandwich.
“Lord in heaven, I’m not watching you eat that.” Eric laughs, despite his irritation.
“Yes, you are. Because you love me, and this is the only time we’ll get to talk until next Friday.”
Eric perches himself on the counter and watches Jack for moment, suddenly overcome by just how much he wants his gross, disgusting, cheesesteak mutilating, Canadian boyfriend right here.
“I love you, Sweetpea. So much.” Eric whispers, blinking away tears.
Jack stops pretending to fellate the sandwich, brow furrowed with immediate concern. “I love you too, Bits,” Jack says softly, setting aside his dinner. “This really bothers you, doesn’t it? That people don’t see us together.”
“I know it’s stupid, the whole point is that people don’t suspect anything, but, I just…”
“It hurts.” Jack finishes. “You know how hard it was to play along with the guys when they’d bring up ‘Pimms’? My relationship with Kenny was this huge, painful, part of my past and when I was at Samwell trying to piece together my life, the knowledge that there were people obsessed with who I used to be, what I could have been, what I could have had? It was too much. My freshman year, I remember trying to read this one story where Kenny came to Samwell to ‘win me back’ after I got out of rehab.” Jack hesitates like he’s said too much, before, whispering, “I think I threw up.”
Jack composes himself and looks at Eric through the screen. “I get it. I understand why you’d want people on your side. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. I want it, too.”
Eric scrubs at his eyes to stop the tears and gives Jack what must be a very watery smile.
“We’ll just have to turn up the tension when we play next month, eh?” Jack says playfully. “I mean, you’re pretty sexy when you lose.”
It was almost a sweet moment. Almost.
____
A week later Eric is wrapping up in the locker room when he gets a mysterious text from Jack. Turns out it’s a URL link that takes him to a newly posted Jack/Eric fic: a 2000 word college AU written by someone with the username ‘zimbits4ever’.
At first Eric doesn’t get it, but as he reads he realizes it’s not just a story, it’s his story. One he’s heard Jack repeat a dozen times. Graduation day. Their first kiss. And the author’s note at the very end: ‘Ours is the only story that matters.’
Eric totally doesn’t cry in front of his entire team.
How about a slightly different take on a soulmate AU? Like
yes, when you’re united with your soulmate you see the world in colour instead
of in black and white and shades of grey, but not until you realise they’re your soulmate. For some
people it’s mundane, and a slow dawning as you fall in love with the person you’ll
want to be with forever (however you choose to define soulmates in this
context) and individual shades start to filter in. Or sometimes it’s a massive
bang of colour all at once, here you
are, the other shoe hath dropped, good fucking luck my guy.Like with zimbits, there’s the scene in the kitchen where
Bitty throws flour at Jack, and as the dust clears and Jack opens one of his
eyes – one of his arctic blue, stunningly beautiful eyes – Bitty has a dawning
realisation of “Oh fuck I have fallen for a straight boy.” And it’s not just
blues as it gets worse, as he starts to see more colours. He sees the blues in
the sky, and then the faint purple at sunset, and then the purple in a
blueberry pie, which transitions into deep reds, then the bright red of their
Samwell jerseys, and by the time Bitty is crying in Jack’s/Chowder’s room
singing Halo, he knows that his favourite hoodie is the same colour as Jack’s
eyes, and he knows that he’ll always see the world in colour but he’ll always
be alone because he fell for a straight boy.But Jack, talking to his father, realises something’s not
quite right, and at first, as he’s heading back to the Haus unsure of what he’s
doing, he sees the black of his graduation robes, but doesn’t realise it. Then the
green of the grass kicks in and he almost stops running because it’s such a
shocking colour and he wants to spend his time drinking it in, and then he gets
to the Haus and sees the red in the “Haus sweet haus” sign Bitty had put up,
and by the time he’s reached Chowder’s room, he sees the teal, and the brown of
the floor and the blue of Bitty’s hoodie, the gold of his hair, and the dark
chocolate of his eyes, and the flush he’s got from crying over Jack. And after
they’ve kissed, he can see the pink in Bitty’s face that’s there for a whole
different reason.With Shitty and Lardo it happens slowly for both of them. It
happens because they’re lounging in Lardo’s studio together, and Lardo is painting,
and she’s got pretty good at mixing her grey and black paints that claim to be
cerulean or carnelian or ochre on the bottle, and she’s painting something that
her colour-seeing art professor says looks beautiful. Shitty, being Shitty has
been smoking and is lazing about without the majority of his clothes, and Lardo
thinks she sort of loves him for how easy he is to be around. And Shitty
suggests that she paint him, because what is his bare chest if not a canvas,
and Lardo gets a brush dipped in something that calls itself magenta and drags
a great line of – of bright paint across Shitty’s chest. It turns out to be the
same colour as the flowers on the rhododendron outside the art building, and
they both see it. But they don’t talk about it because sometimes one person
will make you see some colours, but another will bring out the full spectrum,
and that day in the studio, the only colour Lardo or Shitty can see is the
magenta.The next time she paints him in glow in the dark body paint,
and the fluorescent orange shows up in a smooth line across his forehead, and
Lardo just barely resists the urge to get every colour from her palette to
paint Shitty with in the hope that all the colours will appear. It’s gold next,
the gold of the glitter Shitty wanted to wear to Winter Screw, the gold of
Bitty’s hair. She gets purple, blue, green the first time they hook up, but no
true red until the first time Shitty mumbles, half asleep into her neck, that
he loves her.Ransom and Holster are easy. Ransom had thought, for just a
second, once when he was sixteen, that he’d seen a real colour, but it had just
been a truly spectacular green in real life that had translated to an
especially bright grey that had almost looked like colour. And then on his
first day at Samwell University, his first day at hockey practice, a guy with
sick flow says “We should call you Ransom and Holster. Sick name for a pair of
d-men” and after they enthuse for just a second, they fist bump, and in a rush,
the entire rink floods into screaming technicolour. It’s rare for all the
colours to come at once, for both people in a pair, but it does.Kent Parson sees blue. He’s seen blue since he was sixteen
years old and he first met Jack Zimmermann at the rink. He sees the ice blue
that fills Jack’s eyes, and he saw the blue of their uniforms. And during the
overdose, the worst night of a lot of people’s lives – Parse’s included – the blue
fades. He still sees it just a little better than he does other colours, but
seeing the world in shades of blue, grey, black, and white isn’t exactly a warm
and comforting picture. He eventually gets therapy and tries to make his peace
with that, and assumes that because he fucked it all up with Jack, he’s never
gonna fix it entirely and this cold blue-grey hellscape is going to be he life,
here in the Vegas desert, for the rest of his life.But.
But Jordan Troy gets traded from the Schooners, bringing
with him a Seattle-granted passion for craft beer that makes all of Parse’s “you’re
a pretentious asshole” spidey-senses tingle, but they become friends anyway,
and then Troy becomes his A, and then one night while they’re out on the strip
and Troy is trying to explain to Parse’s “uncultured” palate how to tell the
difference between an oatmeal and a chocolate and a porter without the aid of colouration,
Parse realises he can see just the faintest differences in the beer that hadn’t
been there before, and all of the samplers that Troy had ordered from them
range in colour from amber to blond to deep, deep brown the same colour as Troy’s
eyes, because Parse can see them. And it just about kills him when Troy says,
casually, “the blond should be easy to pick out since it’s the same colour as
your hair” and Parse realises that Troy’s been able to see him in colour for
most of the time they’ve known each other. And Troy admits to having had a stupid
crush on him back when he still played for the Schooners, that only got worse
when he got traded, and eventually bloomed into a full rainbow of colour.
I imagine like, Bitty finding out that his paternal grandad (the biological one) is the head of this super wealthy and old money southern family. And hes dying and wants to connect with his estranged and outofwedlock son and his family. So Bitty’s invited to this fancy party and he’s feeling kind of uncomfortable until he sees Shitty and yells out loud, in the middle of a sea of American Old Money, “SHITTY!”
Anyway Coach’s side of the family makes him really uncomfortable (even if there were a few cool cousins and aunts) so Bitty doesnt like to interact with them a lot.
When Shitty heads over to join Bitty, Suzanne notices him, too, and when he greets her, she calls him Mr. Crappy. Nowhere near as loud, but still audible to the others around them or paying attention–which her son’s earlier shout had certainly created plenty of.
Shitty preens because he can feel the burning disapproval of his father’s family’s eyes on his back.
at first i read this as Shitty and Bitty being both related to this rich uncle, and believe me, if Shitty discovered that he was Bitty’s cousin? he would hug him and NEVER LET GO.
Omg for a moment there I had a flash of what I’d be like if Shitty and Bitty were cousins and met when Bitty was like 12 or something and Shitty is absolutely 10000000% the biggest fan of the Bittle side of his family.
Like Jack fan levels of enthusiasm for this family.
He basically tries to spend all his summers and holidays with them after meeting them with the excuse of bonding with the distant family etc but really he just wants to spend all his time drinking in the fact he has relatives he can proudly call family.
And the Bittles are a bit confused at first by this kid who basically adopted himself into their family but quickly get over it and Bitty loves listening to his older cousin and his ‘radical’ ideas and hanging out with a cousin who doesn’t look at him weird for liking figure skating and actually is super enthusiastic about it is the best thing ever.
Then of course Bitty and Suzanne go to Samwell during family day to see him, and Shitty tears up and hugs them for a really long time before introducing them to fucking everybody, like seriously everybody.
Jack and Bitty exchange civil nods with each other, while Shitty basically vibrates with excitement. It happens again next year and when Shitty finds out Bitty applied and was accepted to Samwell, he runs across campus twice telling everybody before calmly calling Bitty back and helping him pro-con all the colleges he’s considering.
When Bitty confirms he’ll come to Samwell, they throw a massive party, he gets drunk and then spends an hour crying on Jack’s shoulder about how amazing his little cousin is and how much he wants Bitty to be happy, etc.
fake dating! zimbits
It was only by a stroke of luck that Jack happened to look at his phone just as he exits the lecture hall. The group chat was blowing up – the group chat was always blowing up these days – but the lack of all-caps or exclamation marks caught his attention right away.
Eric Bittle: Guys, I wouldn’t ask this of y’all if I really didn’t need this, but I have to ask a HUGE favor of one of you.
Shitty Knight: brah are you dying
Justin Oluransi: You can have my kidney, Bits.
Adam Birkholtz: u aren’t gonna save that for me just in CASE, JUSTIN?
Larissa Duan: shit, bitty, r u ok
Eric Bittle: Um, yeah, mostly, I just…..need someone to pretend to be my boyfriend.
I challenge you to retell any piece of Jack or Bitty’s college years as a series of in-universe RPF callout posts
**whispers** dammit this is clever and I’ve never done a real callout post so let’s see how this goes*clears throat, we’re now in the land of my UBER SUCESSFUL in-universe rpf blog. My character will be one of an ex-Pimms shipper who’s been jaded by the discourse surrounding Jack’s OD.*
Here’s a brief coverage of Fall Semester of Year Two: